Blogs Are About Being Elite

There is nothing like a good controversy, and have I got controversy for you today. Since this is the first guest post while Darren is gone, it seems appropriate to make things necessarily volatile right from the start.

I was Rubel-bombed which brought another breed of commenters to this topic. My argument was that by Technorati indexing MySpace blogs, the quality of Technorati results would be diminished. One commenter responded that the internet is not for elitists.

As a matter of fact, when content production is at play, the internet IS for elitists. Perhaps we don’t like to use those words as “elitism” has a negative stigma to it. However, don’t we all try to get higher pagerank? Don’t we all try to optimize our entries for the best SERPs possible? Doesn’t scoring high in Technorati bump our profile up in general?

In other words, it’s a good thing to be in the elite and it’s highly unfair to those of us who work hard to position our blogs in strategically excellent positioning to have the pool of content thinned by less than excellent content.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Why would any serious blogger be concerned about the very tip of the long tail, which is where the vast majority of these blogs will end up. Instead of being ranked 5,000 of 33.3 million, you’ll be 5,000 of 43.3 million. This is a non-issue.

I am biased because I hate myspace. It is like a huge collection of all those crappy geocities pages that popped up in the mid 90’s. So yes I am against technorati indexing myspace blogs… if you can call them blogs.

I like elitism. It encourages quality. It’s either you become elite or get left behind. MSN Spaces blogs may pose a threat, but not Myspace blogs. It’s just a bunch of teens babbling among themselves about their crappy little lives.

Hey, abd, why do you hate myspace so much? I mean, sure, it’s got crappy design, and every time you load a page there’s a billion advertisements, pop-up ads, and javascript errors, but it’s one of the most popular web sites out there to date… think of how many people it’s bringing online– people who now have the ability to read YOUR “tips for men” blog! (If they thought it had any value to them, that is.)

And who knows? There are still some decent geocities pages out there today, and maybe some people will come up with something worthwhile on a myspace blog!

Cutting off the large portion of the younger generation, those who rely on myspace like they rely on air, is a bad idea. And, really, how would technorati indexing myspace blogs affect you negatively, if at all?

I believe everyone that blogs deserves a chance to be seen. Just not anywhere above my blog on any serious blog engine. Also excluding people who cannot write. Or people who pass notes in class like “Do you like Bobby? ___Yes ___No ___Maybe”

Also people who like dogs, hate cats, hate dogs, like cats, have opinions that contradict my own, and people who use “Dude” as a verb.

Strike politicians and zealots while we’re at it.

Other than that, I am 100% in favor of equal access. As long as that access does not infringe upon my turf. I am not an elitist by choice – it’s just that there are so few people in the world who have anything to say that I care to listen to.